Aimee poem...

It was the first week in September four years ago that we heard Aimee had died. We were on a cruise, I think somewhere off the coast of Spain, when we got the news. I can still remember Eric knocking on my cabin door right before dinner, and, when I answered, simply saying, “Aimee died.” It took a few seconds to process – my first thought was, “Aimee who? The only Aimee I know is— oh…”

Most people who read this probably know the whole Aimee story, but for anyone who doesn’t, I’ll try to give the condensed version. Aimee was dad’s daughter from his first marriage. When he and the crazy first wife divorced, shortly after Aimee was born, my dad was very unfairly forced to give Aimee up. And for 29 years he had no idea where she was…

I was about eight or nine years old when I found out I had a sister somewhere out there in the world. Which I thought was really cool – I’d been growing up with my two brothers, and all my boy cousins (I’m the only girl in the family), and during family gatherings I’d gotten quite used to either hanging out with the boys and doing “boy” things, or retreating to a corner by myself with a book. How great would it have been if I’d had a sister to hang out with? Over the years, I’d occasionally wonder where my sister was, and what she was like, and if she was anything like me. But I pretty much assumed I’d never know. After all, no one knew where she was or how to get in touch with her.

And then one day, very unexpectedly, Aimee managed to contact my grandparents. We may not have known anything about HER whereabouts, but she was able to find my grandparents. And my grandparents told her how to get in touch with dad, and before we all knew it, Aimee was in our lives. We finally got to meet her, and hang out with her, and hear about what her life had been like. And it was great to finally get to know my sister, but with the newfound family came newfound problems. One of the biggest was a sudden seizure disorder Aimee developed a year or two after we’d met her. She never got a proper diagnosis, and one night when we were on that cruise, she had a seizure and fell down a flight of stairs.

She died right before Rick and I moved back to Texas from New Jersey, and I’ve always felt guilty because Aimee sent me a cute carved wooden cat for a housewarming gift – and I never wrote to say thank you. It was one of those things where I kept thinking, “oh, I’ll send an email sometime soon…” and I kept forgetting, and eventually it was too late.

So that brings me to my poem – I wrote it for extra credit for a literature class a couple years ago. It’s a sestina, which is a rather unusual form I’d never even heard of before I took the class. A sestina is comprised of six stanzas of six lines each, and the lines of each stanza end in six end words – the same six end words are at the end of every line of every stanza, just in a different order each time. The poem ends with a three line coda, with two of the end words used in each line. And the entire thing is written in iambic pentameter, so there are five beats, or accents, per line. Does all of that make sense? The trick with a sestina is making the repetition of the end words sound natural and not, well, repetitious. Which I hopefully managed to accomplish with this poem. So here ya go – sorry to anyone who is bored to tears by poetry. :)

For My Sister

This is for you, my sweet sister Aimee.
We didn’t know you for twenty-nine years;
About your love of music and New Orleans;
Or how you have the same eyes as our dad.
My whole life I wanted a sister;
But three years was not enough to spend with you.

I remember when I first met you:
“This is her – this is Aimee!”
You hugged your dad, your brother and your sister,
Amazed you’d found us after all those years.
You couldn’t wait to call our father “dad,”
And tell us all about beloved New Orleans.

And yet you lived in Portland, not New Orleans;
The city was a kind of dream for you;
A place you talked about with me or dad.
“You really want to go back some day, Aimee?”
We all assumed it would take several years,
But I also assumed I would never find my sister.

How was I to know that my sister
Was traveling from Europe to New Orleans
While I spent all my high school years
Barely lending any thoughts to you?
I knew this much: I knew your name was Aimee.
I knew your absence left a void in dad.

Remember all the photos you sent dad?
You, an “only” child, without a sister;
Changed your name from Amy to Aimee.
Pictures of the old house in New Orleans,
Blurry and wonderful pictures of you.
To show us what we’d missed in all those years.

How do we get them back, the lost years?
How am I supposed to console dad?
Twice in your thirty-two years he lost you.
You left behind your new brother and sister.
I didn’t want to go to New Orleans,
Not without you next to me, Aimee.

Dad didn’t know the years would go so fast.
When you died, we buried you in New Orleans.
Back home at last, my sweet sister Aimee.